Checkout lines that used to be a breeze at some stores are now clogged like the 101/405 freeway interchange at rush hour. Supermarkets often have fewer checkers on hand and the ones who are there are grappling with longer lines of shoppers.

So what’s up?

“It’s a labor issue,” said Phil Lempert, a Southern California analyst on consumer behavior. “Labor has gotten more expensive. As margins continue to be slim and overhead is bigger there is less staff.”

Dorothy Luke of Glendale has certainly noticed it. Luke, who shops at a variety of supermarkets in the San Fernando Valley and Pasadena area, said Vons grocery stores seem to be the worst.

“They never have enough check stands open,” she said. “I have long waits at all of the Vons stores I go to, and they always seem to shuttle you toward the self-checkout lines. Ralphs has more checkers … or at least they call someone when it’s backed up. They seem to pay more attention to it.”

Ralphs, a subsidiary of The Kroger Co., uses a system called QueVision to reduce customer wait times. QueVision uses infrared sensors and predictive analytics to let managers know how many shoppers are in the store at any given time. That allows them to redeploy workers to the cash registers when the stores get busy.

With QueVision, Kroger’s family of stores has reduced customer wait times, on average, from four minutes to less than 30 seconds, the company said. Their effort has not gone unnoticed. QueVision earned the company a third-place ranking in the InformationWeek Elite 100, a list of the top business technology innovators in the U.S.

“It works very well,” Ralphs spokeswoman Kendra Doyel said. “It uses a very in-depth algorithm to determine how many people we have at a register now and how many we’ll need later. We implemented this in the Kroger family of stores some time ago and we’ve had it at Ralphs for about two years.”

Vons spokesman Carlos Illingworth said staffing at his company’s stores is virtually unchanged from a year ago, although he didn’t reveal whether fewer workers are now manning the check stands.

Illingworth said Arcadia-based Vons is always developing new ways to make its customer checkout process more efficient.

“The Just For U program and app allow customers to download discounts directly onto their Safeway Club Card and receive those discounts at checkout,” he said, adding that it saves the customer and checker from having to look for and then present paper coupons.

Customers can also sign up for Vons’ Fast Forward program, he said, which allows them to pay using their Fast Forward card or by inputting their phone number and a PIN number.

“No searching for credit or debit cards,” he said.

Many supermarkets have incorporated self-service kiosks to speed things along. Fresh & Easy, which operates 200 stores throughout California, Arizona and Nevada, has taken that idea a step further with all self-checkout lines.

And that’s fine by Jamie Young, who stopped in late Monday at a Fresh & Easy market in Sherman Oaks.

“I like that the stores are small,” the 45-year-old Van Nuys resident said. “This works good for basic grocery purchases, although the choices are limited. I come here because it’s in my neighborhood and it’s convenient.”

All of these efforts have served to speed the checkout process. But when a store gets especially busy there simply may be no way to avoid long lines.

Gabriela Martinez, 30, of Arleta can attest to that. She shops at Food 4 Less, another Kroger subsidiary. And her luck there hasn’t been so good.

“Sometimes I’ll wait in line for 15 minutes if I have too much stuff to go through the fast lane,” she said. “By that time I just want to get out of there!”

Martinez shopped Monday at a Food 4 Less on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Pacoima. The store has seven regular checkout lanes and four express lanes.

“The large ones have it down to a science,” he said. “It’s an important part of the shopping experience, so retailers are very aware of the need for customers to move through the checkout lines quickly.”

So where are things headed next?

Jordan McKee, an analyst with Yankee Group, a Boston-based mobility research firm, has an idea.

“Walmart has already has a introduced a Scan and Go smartphone app where you can walk through the store and start scanning the barcodes on items you want to purchase,” he said. “Then you can go through a self-checkout line, scan the QR code with your smartphone, pay and leave.”

Stop & Shop, a regional supermarket chain with more than 375 stores throughout New England, New York and New Jersey, offers a similar smartphone app called SCAN IT! that allows consumers to scan and bag their groceries while they shop. Shoppers also receive personalized offers based on purchases they’ve made in the past.

The idea of receiving unsolicited, personalized offers on your smartphone definitely has some Big Brother overtones. But McKee said most consumers are OK with the idea.

“We found that 43 percent of consumers are willing to give up some personal information to get those personalized offers,” he said. “This is absolutely where things are headed, but we’re still in the early days. In the next few years we’ll see a bigger injection of mobile technologies. It’s all about convenience, speed and fostering a relationship with the customer.”

Lempert said supermarkets are struggling to retain customers in the face of growing competition from big-box stores, convenience stores, 99 Cents Only stores and a myriad of other retail outlets that now sell food.

“Supermarkets have lost 15 percent of their marketshare over the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s a no-win situation because if you push too hard with the technology that can elminate a lot of jobs. But that’s the way things are going.”

Kevin Smith handles business news and editing for the Southern California News Group, which includes 11 newspapers, websites and social media channels. He covers everything from employment, technology and housing to retail, corporate mergers and business-based apps. Kevin often writes stories that highlight the local impact of trends occurring nationwide. And the focus is always to shed light on why those issues matter to readers in Southern California.

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